All general rules and precepts fail, because they proceed from the false assumption that men are constituted wholly, or almost wholly, alike; an assumption which the philosophy of Helvetius expressly makes.  Whereas the truth is that the original difference between individuals in intellect and morality is immeasurable.

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The question as to whether morality is something real is the question whether a well-grounded counter-principle to egoism actually exists.

As egoism restricts concern for welfare to a single individual, viz., the man’s own self, the counter-principle would have to extend it to all other individuals.

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It is only because the will is above and beyond time that the stings of conscience are ineradicable, and do not, like other pains, gradually wear away.  No! an evil deed weighs on the conscience years afterwards as heavily as if it had been freshly committed.

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Character is innate, and conduct is merely its manifestation; the occasion for great misdeeds comes seldom; strong counter-motives keep us back; our disposition is revealed to ourselves by our desires, thoughts, emotions, when it remains unknown to others.  Reflecting on all this, we might suppose it possible for a man to possess, in some sort, an innate evil conscience, without ever having done anything very bad.

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Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t like done to yourself.  This is, perhaps, one of those arguments that prove, or rather ask, too much.  For a prisoner might address it to a judge.

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Stupid people are generally malicious, for the very same reason as the ugly and the deformed.

Similarly, genius and sanctity are akin.  However simple-minded a saint may be, he will nevertheless have a dash of genius in him; and however many errors of temperament, or of actual character, a genius may possess, he will still exhibit a certain nobility of disposition by which he shows his kinship with the saint.

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The great difference between Law without and Law within, between the State and the Kingdom of God, is very clear.  It is the State’s business to see that every one should have justice done to him; it regards men as passive beings, and therefore takes no account of anything but their actions.  The Moral Law, on the other hand, is concerned that every one should do justice; it regards men as active, and looks to the will rather than the deed.  To prove that this is the true distinction let the reader consider what would happen if he were to say, conversely, that it is the State’s business that every one should do justice, and the business of the Moral Law that every one should have justice done to him.  The absurdity is obvious.